Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
TERÉZ GERSZI: Frans Floris' Early Drawings in Budapest
can be found in a composition entitled Christ Carried into Heaven by Angels (fig. 9), made by an unknown engraver after Floris. 26 Thus, the drawing can be evaluated as Floris' first idea for the composition recorded on paper, which does not show all the figures but only the most important ones, who had undergone significant changes in regard to their characteristics and position in the composition before the final, multi-figure work was completed. The depiction of Christ's body almost exactly follows the original idea, but on the engraving three angels hold the body and the figure holding Christ's feet is positioned differently. Of the figures depicted on the engraving with the tools of torture, the one carrying the cross is virtually identical with the cross-bearer seen in the drawing but is placed on the other side, as is the figure holding the spear, in line with the reversed image technique used for prints' preparatory draw rings. The indisputable link between the drawing on the verso and the engraving positively confirms the authorship of Frans Floris in the case of the two Budapest drawings and disproves their previous attribution to an artist in Floris' circle. Teréz Gerszi is chief scientific supervisor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. NOTES 1 E. Schrüter, Die Ikonographie des Themas Parnass vor Rafia el. Die Schrift und Bildstradition von der Spätantike bis zum 15. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim and New York 1977 (Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, 6). 2 C. van de Velde, Frans Floris (1519/20-1570), Leven en werken, 2 vols., Bruxelles 1975, 405-6, no. C 42, fig. 195. ! Van de Velde 1975, 159-64, no. A 29. 4 Ibid, no. C 41, fig. 194. T. Gerszi, Netherlandish Drawings in the Budapest Museum, Sixteenth-Century Drawings, 2 vols, Amsterdam and New York 1971, no. 87a: Apollo and the Muses, pen and brown ink on paper, 202 x 312 mm, inv. no. K.58.206; no. 88a: The Rewaking of the Muses after War, pen and brown ink, 273 x 325 mm, inv. no. K.58.207. Watermark: coat of arms (variant of Briquet 1201). 6 T. Gerszi, Renaissance et maniérisme aux Pays-Bas. Dessins de musée des Beaux-Arts de Budapest, exh. cat, Paris, musée du Louvre. Budapest 2008, no. 11; J. Qu. van Regteren Altena already noted during his visit to Budapest in 1969 that the drawing might be an early work by Floris, and the new publications of the artist's drawings made in his Italian period made it possible to rethink the attribution.
